This article makes a case for the importance of integrating public writing pedagogy in and beyond second language (L2) writing classrooms. Public writing is defined as a situated, distributed act of engaging public audiences through writing, with various semiotic resources and modalities, to make meaning, connect, and bring about social change. L2 writers practice public writing deliberately or unwittingly, for various personal or political purposes, and within various discursive contexts. However, such practices are underresearched, undertheorized, and underdiscussed in L2 writing classrooms, which could be partially ascribed to the disciplinary disposition of the field L2 writing and to the ethical concerns regarding cultural assimilation. The article begins by contextualizing the definitions of public writing in relation to L2 writing. It then explains why it is important to discuss public writing in an L2 writing classroom and consider public writing a legitimate L2 writing issue while acknowledging the pedagogical resistance. In particular, the article highlights the decolonial potential of practicing public writing in an L2. In the final section, the article offers pedagogical guidelines and a graphic framework concerning the “where” and “how” of teaching public writing in an L2.

The multidisciplinary research presented in this paper focuses everyday life and social practices that can be characterized by the use of one (or more) language variety, modality or register. Conceptual ideas that arise from explorations based upon empirical analysis of situated and distributed so called monolingual and multilingual oral talk, written communication, signed interactions and embodiment in and across virtual and in-real-life settings inside and outside higher education and schools are presented and discussed. Using sociocultural and decolonial perspectives on language-use or languaging, analytical findings from traditionally segregated fields of study – Literacy Studies, Bilingualism, Deaf education, Language Studies – are juxtaposed. An overarching concern here is framed by the continuing dominance of structural linguistic positions and demarcated fields within the Language and Educational Sciences that frame didactical thinking. The work presented here highlights concerns regarding established concepts like ‘bilingualism’ and ‘codes’ and suggests more empirically relevant alternatives like ‘chaining’, ‘languaging’, ‘fluidity’, ‘timespace’ and ‘visual-orientation’ from ethnographically and netnographically framed projects where data-sets include everyday life in virtual settings and educational institutions in the global North. Focusing social practices – what is communicated and the ways in which communication occurs – challenges currently dominant monolingual and monological perspectives on human language broadly and oral, written and signed languaging specifically.